Boston Marathon Runners Seek Another Chance

Runners gather near Kenmore Square after two bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon.

An online petition to grant a spot in next year’s Boston Marathon to bomb-affected runners of last month’s race has gained more than 21,000 signatures.

But the Boston Athletic Association, which runs the race, said it hadn’t entirely decided what to offer those 5,700 runners who failed to complete the 26.2-mile race before two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 250.

Besides awarding medals to those runners not able to finish, BAA is seeking to assign them official finish times based on where they were when the bombs effectively ended the race.

Unclear, though, is whether those runners will receive a slot in the 2014 race, as the online petition requests.

“As we work on our plan, and options for that group of runners which did not have the opportunity to cross the finish line of the race, we ask those runners for continued patience,” said a statement from Tom Grilk, BAA executive director.

The Boston Marathon field consists of about 27,000 runners, including 21,000 who qualify by finishing a previous marathon in a relatively elite time. Of the 6,000 other runners, many are granted spots by charities that use the event for fund-raising or awareness-raising purposes.

Because the bombs ignited more than four hours after the start of the race, most qualifying runners had crossed the finish line, leaving largely charity runners still out on the course.

The runner who started the petition, 34-year-old Ryan Polly of Vermont, said in an interview that he was granted a spot in last month’s race for having worked hard to overcome a health condition. “I’m not trying to pressure” the BAA, said Polly, who launched the petition on the website Change.org. “We just want to let them know what we want.”

“It’s a little aggressive,” Marc Davis, a BAA spokesman, said of the petition. “While we can understand what his intentions are, we can’t always agree on the execution.”

Demand for slots in the Boston Marathon is so much greater than supply that the race sells out within hours of when registration opens in September.